Peter Norman

My friend Gissur Erlingsson sent me a link to this story at The Independent about the fallout to the late Australian Olympian Peter Norman for his role in the famous black power protest at the 1968 Mexico City games. I'd written on the image some time ago but focused on Carlos and Smith. Norman paid a heavy price for his participation in this event. It seems like the Australian government might be ready to try to rectify that somewhat. Too late.

Math & Politics

A couple of reminders why teaching mathematics is not a politics free zone. Here is a post from The New York Times a while back. And here is a recent story on NPR on Robert Moses, an American hero.

Passings ~ Willie Louis, aka Willie Reed, (1937- 2013)

Willie Louis (Reed), an American hero, has died. Before changing his name and moving from Mississippi to Chicago as self-protection, Willie Reed, then 18 years old, testified in court against the white murders of Emmett Till. You can find an obituary here at The New York Times.

Teachers

As many readers know, I have a son, August, who is six and a half; he is in first grade, like the boys and girls who were massacred in CT last Friday. When I think of those twenty children, I think of my boy. And when I think of this teacher, Kaitlin Roig, and of the teachers who died trying to protect their students last week, I think of Shannon Wolff and the other teachers and staff at John Muir where August goes.

So, while I posted this on my FB page, I think it belongs here too:

In the states that are pressing to deprive teachers and other public sector workers of their right to organize, "first responders" are exempted from the legislation for strategic reasons. Well - here is a first responder. Here is a hero. And this is one of the teachers who survived. The next time you hear someone running his or her mouth about public employees and their unions and how privileged they are, and how overpaid, or how they don't work hard or teach well enough or whatever freak'n thing people like to complain about ... remember this clip. And tell the complainer to kiss your butt. You owe that much to the teachers of the country.

Passings ~ Lawrence Guyot (1939~2012)

When I was in third grade my parents moved (due to a job transfer) from western Massachusetts to Pass Christian, Mississippi. I was about 9 or 10 at the time. We lived there for only about a year before migrating back north. In his book on the SNCC, which I read in college, Howard Zinn described Pass Christian as the most racist town in the south. Maybe so. It also was the place where Lawrence Guyot was born. We lived there roughly during the years he was off getting the snot beaten out of him by racists. Mr. Guyot, a courageous participant in civil rights struggles has died. You can find his obituary here at The New York Times.

Milestones - Nelson Mandela

Today is Nelson Mandela's 94th birthday. The BBC report is here. And lest we too readily subscribe to the sanitized view of the man as simply an elder statesman, recall that his raised, clenched fist stands for the long (ongoing) struggle for democracy and self-determination against those who resist such basic political goals.

Heroes - Woody Guthrie

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Woody Guthrie - an American hero. Guthrie wrote many, many songs but perhaps the best known is "This Land is Your Land," the sanitized version of which is a staple among putative patriots in the U.S.; here are the un-sanitized, eminently relevant  lyrics:

This Land Is Your Land
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

© Copyright 1956 (renewed), 1958 (renewed),
1970 and 1972 by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc.
& TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI).

Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978)

Harvey Milk at the 1978 Gay Freedom Day Parade.
Photograph © Terry Schmitt/ San Francisco Chronicle

Three decades ago tomorrow conservative politician Dan White snuck into San Francisco City Hall where he shot and killed Harvey Milk and George Moscone who, respectively, were a member of the Board of Supervisors and Mayor of the city. Milk commonly is characterized as the first openly gay person elected to public office in the United States. Here are some of the good bits from a 1999 piece in (of all places) TIME Magazine:

"There was a time when it was impossible for people — straight or gay — even to imagine a Harvey Milk. The funny thing about Milk is that he didn't seem to care that he lived in such a time. After he defied the governing class of San Francisco in 1977 to become a member of its board of supervisors, many people — straight and gay — had to adjust to a new reality he embodied: that a gay person could live an honest life and succeed. [. . .]

When he began public life, though, Milk was a preposterous figure — an "avowed homosexual," in the embarrassed language of the time, who was running for office. In the 1970s, many psychiatrists still called homosexuality a mental illness. In one entirely routine case, the Supreme Court refused in 1978 to overturn the prison sentence of a man convicted solely of having sex with another consenting man. A year before, it had let stand the firing of a stellar Tacoma, Wash., teacher who made the mistake of telling the truth when his principal asked if he was homosexual. No real national gay organization existed, and Vice President Walter Mondale haughtily left a 1977 speech after someone asked him when the Carter Administration would speak in favor of gay equality. To be young and realize you were gay in the 1970s was to await an adulthood encumbered with dim career prospects, fake wedding rings and darkened bar windows. [. . .]

Relentless in pursuit of attention, Milk was often dismissed as a publicity whore. "Never take an elevator in city hall," he told his last boyfriend in a typical observation. The marble staircase afforded a grander entrance.

But there was method to the megalomania. Milk knew that the root cause of the gay predicament was invisibility [. . .] That made the election of an openly gay person, not a straight ally, symbolically crucial. "You gotta give them hope," Milk always said. [. . .]

The few gays who had scratched their way into the city's establishment blanched when Milk announced his first run for supervisor in 1973, but Milk had a powerful idea: he would reach downward, not upward, for support. He convinced the growing gay masses of "Sodom by the Sea" that they could have a role in city leadership, and they turned out to form "human billboards" for him along major thoroughfares. In doing so, they outed themselves in a way once unthinkable. It was invigorating."

At a time when virtually all Americans would've cheered dissidents in Eastern Europe who were "living in truth," Milk showed the importance of pursuing that strategy here too. He trafficked in, imagination and visibility and hope. And he did so, as John Cloud, the author of this piece suggests, by reaching downward not upward, that is, by building democracy.

__________
We've had the award winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk for a while. Now, of course, we have a major motion picture to remind us that imagination and visibility and hope remain very imperfect and precarious achievements. You can read The New York Times review here ... and I'll post more as they appear.

Heroes ~ Kinkri Devi

You can find an obituary for remarkable environmental activist Kinkri Devi here in The New York Times.